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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27005281">You’re their mother. You know.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandra_Taylor/pseuds/Sandra_Taylor'>Sandra_Taylor</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Helen Pevensie's POV, Introspection, POV Second Person</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 01:14:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,312</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27005281</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandra_Taylor/pseuds/Sandra_Taylor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Iit’s been a year and the summer is over once more and finally, finally, your children are coming back. Your light and joy, the reason why you keep hoping for a better future. Surely the raids can’t last forever. Surely, victory is just behind the corner.<br/>But when your children come back they come back… different.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>82</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>You’re their mother. You know.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You‘re a wife of a soldier and a mother of four and the decision you‘re about to make is breaking your heart.</p>
<p>But there’s no other choice. War is terrible and if sending the children to country will save at least some of their childhood, some of their innocence, it’s worth doing.</p>
<p>But it’s still breaking your heart, to send them off all alone. What you don’t know is – welcoming them back is going to be so much worse.</p>
<p>
  <span>Tha</span>
  <span>t year</span>
  <span> is never-ending, with constant raids. In the meantime you keep busy. You’re no nurse, but war is war and every hand counts. And so you help the soldiers that come back incomplete. Mostly they’re missing a limb or two but sometimes… sometimes their bodies are whole but their eyes tell a different story.</span>
</p>
<p>You see horrors you could never imagine. You see men, young men with their lives in front of them, stealing a scalpel just so they can end their suffering. And once, just once, with tears in your eyes you’re the one using the scalpel. The boy lost everything, including his two legs. He doesn’t have the will to live no longer. You see boys just barely older than your Peter raging about the injustice that was done to them, you see girls, young girls hardly older than your sweet, sweet Susan crying for their fathers, their brothers, their boyfriends, their friends that went to war and are never coming back. And with every new letter that comes to you you fear the worst as well.</p>
<p>
  <span>But then i</span>
  <span>t’s been a year and the summer is over once more</span>
  <span> and finally, finally, your children are coming back. Your light and joy, the reason why you keep hoping for a better future. Surely the raids can’t last forever. Surely, victory is just behind the corner.</span>
</p>
<p>But when your children come back they come back… different.</p>
<p>
  <span>They put on a mask and smile at you and hug you (even Edmund, </span>
  <span>your</span>
  <span> sweet baby who grew into a troubled young man, who refused </span>
  <span>your</span>
  <span> touches once war started, didn’t even let </span>
  <span>you</span>
  <span> hug him goodbye), but they’re not quite themselves. You’re their mother. You know.</span>
</p>
<p>They don’t need you, you realize over the next few days. They mercifully let you hug them and reassure them and care for them, but they don’t need that care.</p>
<p>
  <span>You’re so busy helping in the hospice that one day you forget to cook for them. When you realize it you hurry home. But instead of hungry children you find the pantry full and cooked meal on the table. Susan even gives you some left over coupons she didn’t need. She shopped and she cooked and Peter and Edmund are helping Lucy with homework and you’re left the</span>
  <span>re</span>
  <span> once more realizing that those are not your children. Those are simply no children at all.</span>
</p>
<p>They’re all a little wilder, all have some sharper edges. You meet Peter once in kitchen in the middle of the night when you wake up thirsty. Peter is just sitting there at the table, in the dark. When you finally notice him you have a small scare, but he doesn’t react at all. He looks at you but it’s as if he doesn’t see you at all.</p>
<p>You’ve seen that look before. In the soldiers that come home full in body but not in mind.</p>
<p>When you speak up he puts on a mask of boyish grin. But you know better.</p>
<p>He gets into fights now. He never used to do that. Yes, he always tried to help with any injustice he saw. But he never got into fights before. You don’t think he starts them, but you’re pretty sure he wins them. And what he can’t win on his own Edmund is there to help with.</p>
<p>
  <span>Edmund. Your quiet boy is still as quiet as ever. But when before (before the train, before their visit of t</span>
  <span>he professor</span>
  <span>, before the </span>
  <span>year away from you</span>
  <span>) it isolated him from his siblings, it doesn’t have the same effect now. All three of them, even little Lucy, the hurricane that she is, are respectful of his silences and careful to include </span>
  <span>Edmund</span>
  <span> in almost everything they’re doing. In fact, they seem to look to him for coun</span>
  <span>se</span>
  <span>l more often than to anyone else. </span>
  <span>He’s the least changed, yet there’s a quiet self-esteem to him that there never was before. As if he gained it over the short few months in the same way men gain it over the years of their early adulthood.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>O</span>
  <span>r maybe the one least change</span>
  <span>d</span>
  <span> is Lucy. Sweet, wild Lucy so absorbed in her stories and plays that she hardly has time for her own homework let alone anything else. </span>
  <span>But there’s something dangerous in her step, in her voice when she laughs. It’s not a laughter of a child and it scares you and you don’t know why. After all, Lucy is no different than she was before summer. Except then she says something about the war that seems out of place yet wise beyond her years and Peter just nods and agrees and the picture changes into something dark and wild and dangerous. Her siblings indulge her easily in her plays now and you’re most scared when they’re all laughing, for their laugh resonates in your house and it’s not the laugh of children, not any laugh you know.</span>
</p>
<p>There’s wildness in Susan you never saw in her before, even when she was a child. She was always kind and gentle, caring for her siblings and worrying about things she’s too little to worry about. That changed as well. She’s still gentle and caring, but she’s no longer hesitant and she behaves in ways you don’t recognize in her. She goes to the quarters that house the healthy soldiers almost every day, taking care to dress in flattering clothes and put on subtle make-up that makes her look older than she is.</p>
<p>
  <span>That’s the one time you actually fight with your children. There’s a lot unsaid between you and most of your worries about them </span>
  <span>are</span>
  <span> about subtle things you don’t have words to address. But you know this. And you honestly think that Susan is too young to flirt with soldiers.</span>
</p>
<p>You want to quietly talk to Susan, but as if sensing her distress your other children flock to the kitchen and stand firmly behind Susan.</p>
<p>“You worry too much,” says Lucy, flippant and wild and almost uncaring. Of course she doesn’t see the issue. She’s too young to understand what damage an older soldier can do to a girl like Susan.</p>
<p>“<span>Susan knows what she’s doing. She can take care of herself,” says Peter, with f</span><span>inality</span><span> in his voice that suggests that he’s not used to people telling him no. Where did he get it? You never heard it from him before and you don’t appreciate it being used on you.</span></p>
<p>“<span>We need her there,” says Edmund, so simply as if it explains anything. </span><span>And you’re almost too afraid to look into his eyes because on occasions like this they’re the eyes of a soldier that saw too much too soon.</span></p>
<p>“<span>You can’t tell me what to do anyway</span><span>s</span><span>. This needs to be done,” says Susan and that’s the thing that breaks you.</span></p>
<p>Because she’s right and you don’t know what she’s talking about and those are not your children. They look like them, yes, and when they feel charitable they let you pretend that they are them. But they’re not and you all know it.</p>
<p>There are tales about children who disappear and then come back changed, you know. Not quite themselves, not quite human.</p>
<p>And as you watch them leave the room all together you wonder. Is there still Fae folk in the country?</p>
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